Unveiling a two-pronged strategy for rescuing Medicare, the Clinton administration invited congressional Republicans Wednesday to help devise a quick, bipartisan fix to keep the program afloat by trimming growth of payments to doctors, hospitals and other health care providers.

Unveiling a two-pronged strategy for rescuing Medicare, the Clinton administration invited congressional Republicans Wednesday to help devise a quick, bipartisan fix to keep the program afloat by trimming growth of payments to doctors, hospitals and other health care providers.

What to do about poverty in America is back on the nation's agenda again, but neither Congress nor the Administration seems to have any real solution. More than 25 years after then-President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national War on Poverty, the situation appears to be worsening.

Assembling a car body is like putting down the foundation of a house: If you don't get it just right, nothing else fits together very well. It's the difference between the smooth, silent ride of a Toyota Lexus and the annoying wind sounds, water leaks and rattles that have often come with cars made in Detroit.

Congressional investigators said Wednesday that underlying problems that allowed so many abuses to occur at the scandal-plagued Department of Housing and Urban Development have not been corrected. Problems in such areas as management, accounting and computer systems continue to beset the agency, the General Accounting Office told a House subcommittee.

Assembling a car body is like putting down the foundation of a house: If you don't get it just right, nothing else fits together very well. It's the difference between the smooth, silent ride of a Toyota Lexus and the annoying wind sounds, water leaks and rattles that have often come with cars made in Detroit.

A day after activists protesting Republican social service cuts kept House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) from delivering a speech, he lashed out at liberals, who, he said, charge that "if you don't give every child a Ferrari you're cheating them." Defending House GOP initiatives against a mounting campaign of criticism, Gingrich blamed Democratic policies and their defenders for creating and sustaining "a mess" that "needs to be replaced."

Countries throwing off the tyranny of totalitarian communism better not look to the United States as their model if they want to treat their citizens decently, and fairly, while they revolutionize their distressed economic systems. America, as wealthy as we are, is the only industrialized nation except for South Africa that does not provide a wide range of social benefits from universal health care to maternity leave.

In the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal put people back to work with multibillion-dollar public works programs that built schools, roads and dams--but also paid people to lean on their shovels and, the saying goes, gave a bad name to leaf-raking. Similarly, in the post-war boom of the 1950s, President Dwight D.

Serious crime is rampant at the Bicycle Club, a Bell Gardens card casino seized by the federal government six years ago, and the government's own trustee has hindered attempts to halt it, according to congressional testimony by the club's head of security. The witness, Douglas Sparkes, told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday that the trustee, Harry J. Richard, threatened to fire him for cooperating with Senate investigators.

A day after activists protesting Republican social service cuts kept House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) from delivering a speech, he lashed out at liberals, who, he said, charge that "if you don't give every child a Ferrari you're cheating them." Defending House GOP initiatives against a mounting campaign of criticism, Gingrich blamed Democratic policies and their defenders for creating and sustaining "a mess" that "needs to be replaced."

In the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal put people back to work with multibillion-dollar public works programs that built schools, roads and dams--but also paid people to lean on their shovels and, the saying goes, gave a bad name to leaf-raking. Similarly, in the post-war boom of the 1950s, President Dwight D.

What to do about poverty in America is back on the nation's agenda again, but neither Congress nor the Administration seems to have any real solution. More than 25 years after then-President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national War on Poverty, the situation appears to be worsening.

Congressional investigators said Wednesday that underlying problems that allowed so many abuses to occur at the scandal-plagued Department of Housing and Urban Development have not been corrected. Problems in such areas as management, accounting and computer systems continue to beset the agency, the General Accounting Office told a House subcommittee.

Countries throwing off the tyranny of totalitarian communism better not look to the United States as their model if they want to treat their citizens decently, and fairly, while they revolutionize their distressed economic systems. America, as wealthy as we are, is the only industrialized nation except for South Africa that does not provide a wide range of social benefits from universal health care to maternity leave.